WHILE Sebastian Loeb capped off his seventh world championship winning season by taking a third consecutive victory on Wales Rally GB, things didn’t go so well for Barrowford’s Daniel Barritt.

Barritt’s season of highs and lows took another dip as a loss of gearbox oil put paid to his and driver Toshi Arai’s hopes of finishing the season with a flourish.

They made a steady start with their Subaru Impreza completing Thursday’s Cardiff Bay Spectator Special Stage in 27th place overall, fifth in the Production World Rally Championship category.

Sadly, it all began to go wrong midway through the following morning’s opening Hafren test and by the end of the following Sweet Lamb stage their rally was effectively over.

“By the stage finish we’d lost all the gearbox oil so a new box had to be fitted in order that we could restart the rally the following day,” said Barritt.

“On Saturday, we had more handling problems and had no confidence in the car. This meant more work for the mechanics and after exceeding our permitted 15 minute service time allowance at Builth Wells we collected more time penalties.”

They went on to complete the rest of Saturday’s and Sunday’s scheduled stages, finishing the rally 30th overall and ninth in the PWRC class.

Barritt continued “I look forward to my home rally. It has some of the best stages in the world, but this year it didn’t go to plan.

“When you’re effectively forced out so early your motivation goes and you lose that extra 10 per cent that’s so important to getting a good result.”

Portugese pairing Armindo Araújo and Miguel Ramalho became the first crew in over a decade to secure two PWRC titles in a row.

The Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X crew finished ahead of the Impreza of their closest championship rivals Swedens Patrik Flodin and Goran Bergsten to retain their crowns.

Loeb rated his win as his hardest of the year, saying: “It was a difficult battle but I took a lot of pleasure from the stages and really enjoyed this rally, which was definitely the longest battle I've had this season.”

Runners-up Petter Solberg and Chris Patterson finished 19.1 seconds behind in another Citroen C4 WRC.

Matthew Wilson and Scott Martin were the top British crew finishing seventh in their Stobart M-Sport backed Ford Focus WRC.